Granola Bar? Candy Bar.

Perhaps with the change in seasons you’ve taken up the task of packing lunchboxes once again. My guess is that most American lunchboxes don’t have candy bars in them. But I suspect many have other sorts of snack bars.

Back in the 1940s, candy bar makers experimented with fortifying their product with vitamins: not just good, but good for you! The idea was that that candy’s energy (calories) just needed a little supplement to transform a treat into a meal.

Sounds kooky, right? Well, muck-rakers up on the northern side of the border have been poking around in the nutrition labels of some of the biggest selling snack bars and guess what?

In general, I wouldn’t consider granola bars to be healthy snacks. I’d consider them to be less-tasty chocolate bars…. I’d relegate granola bars into the treat category.

Freedhoff found lots of sugar, lots of misleading health and nutrition claims, and a lot less of the fiber and protein that would give the bars some power to satiate real hunger. On the other hand, it’s hard to see where “treat” comes in. Taste testers at the Ottowa Citizen described the experience of many of the bars as “ghastly” and having a “texture reminiscent of sawdust and others like congealed mucilage with an odd fruity taste not unlike cheap candy.”

Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure

Welcome to Candy Professor

Candy in American Culture What is it about candy? Here you'll find the forgotten, the strange, the curious, the surprising. Our candy story, one post at a time.

(C) Samira Kawash

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